Microsoft Launches Data Centres In South Africa

Microsoft South Africa announced that it has launched enterprise-grade data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

At an event led by MD of Microsoft South Africa Lillian Barnard, the company stated that the opening of the data centres will help power the fourth industrial revolution.

The event was also attended by Asif Valley, Cloud Development Lead for Microsoft South Africa, Minister of Communications Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, and Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president of Azure Networking at Microsoft.

Microsoft launching data centres in South Africa puts the country among key global regions, said Khalidi.

“These are the first hyperscale data centres on the continent,” he said, adding that the data centres launching is only “the tip of the iceberg” for the country.

Delayed launch

Microsoft announced in 2017 that it would be implementing data centres for its Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 services locally.

These data centres were expected to be installed in Johannesburg and Cape Town in 2018, however.

At the time, Robert Marston, ‎Global Head of Products at SEACOM, said the development would provide huge assistance to enterprise-level implementations of infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, and other cloud services.

However, Microsoft failed to complete the project by the end of 2018 – making it Microsoft’s only failure in terms of data centre implementation worldwide last year.

When MyBroadband previously spoke with Microsoft about the delay, the company did not provide details regarding why it failed to implement its South African data centres on time.

“We’re building an unprecedented level of infrastructure to support our new enterprise-grade cloud data centers in South Africa,” Microsoft said at the time.

“We’re focused on building the right solutions for our customers and are working towards availability of our new enterprise-grade cloud data centers in South Africa in 2019.”